Results for “competition and territory”

Songs

It's My Thing

EPMD

A crowd-hyping boast track built around EPMD's James Brown-sampled catchphrase, alternating call-and-response chants with verses…

braggadocio originality vs. biting crowd control/performance

Champion

The Roots

A motivational anthem built around the word "champion," stacking boasts about relentless work ethic against a chant-like hook…

perseverance self-mythologizing competition

Rev On the Red Line

Foreigner

A straightforward car-racing anthem that uses drag-strip mechanics as a vehicle for macho self-definition. The song's pleasures…

speed and risk masculine bravado rebellion against authority

Represent

Weezer

A brash sports-anthem pep talk built for the 2010 World Cup, 'Represent' trades Weezer's usual self-deprecation for…

competition and pride integrity versus winning family and reputation

The Fire

The Roots

An anthem of self-motivation built around a simple metaphor: inner drive as flame. John Legend's hook frames perseverance as an…

perseverance self-belief legacy and destiny

Work

Gang Starr

A boastful street-level anthem built around the double meaning of 'work' as both hustle/grind and criminal labor, delivered with…

hustler ethic street surveillance and paranoia status and reputation

Steve Biko (Stir It Up)

A Tribe Called Quest

A three-MC posse cut built almost entirely from boasts, wordplay, and Queens pride, borrowing the name and instrumental cue of…

hip-hop bravado and lyrical skill group identity and borough pride fleeting social consciousness

Step to My Girl

Souls of Mischief

A posse-cut brag track built around a single scenario: other men hitting on the narrators' girlfriends, and each rapper…

jealousy and possessiveness masculine status competition hypervigilance/insecurity masked as confidence

Batting Practice

Souls of Mischief

A posse cut built around a single extended conceit: rapping as batting practice, with each Souls of Mischief member (plus…

braggadocio competition/skill display crew unity

One Beer

MF DOOM

A boozy, freewheeling posse-cut of a track built on the pun of "one beer" doubling as "one beer left" and a coded jab at fake…

intoxication as metaphor for scarcity/competition hip-hop authenticity vs. imitation supervillain persona

Maybellene

Mos Def

This is Mos Def's rendition of Chuck Berry's rock-and-roll foundational text, recorded for the Chess Records biopic soundtrack.…

infidelity and suspicion pursuit and competition American car culture

409

The Beach Boys

An early Beach Boys car song that treats a Chevrolet engine like a lover and a racehorse at once, built almost entirely on chant…

car culture masculine pride and status consumerism/saving toward a goal

What They Do

The Roots

A mid-90s Roots track built around a single defiant refrain, positioning the group's artistic integrity against a hip-hop…

authenticity vs. commercialism artistic integrity hip-hop lineage and craft

F**k Wit Dre Day (And Everybody's Celebratin')

Dr. Dre

This is a genre-defining diss track in which Dr. Dre, joined by Snoop Doggy Dogg, uses the launch of Death Row Records to…

betrayal and loyalty dominance and territory label rivalry

Oh No

Mos Def

A posse-cut showcase built around G-funk swagger, "Oh No" pairs Mos Def and Pharoahe Monch trading verses over a Nate Dogg hook,…

hustle and self-made success competitive supremacy coastal unity

Mr. Big

Free

A blues-rock warning shot aimed at a rival encroaching on the narrator's relationship. It's less a fully worked lyric than a…

jealousy and possessiveness masculine pride confrontation

Hit It Run

Run-DMC

A boast-driven b-boy anthem in which D.M.C. asserts lineage, dominance, and craft over Jam Master Jay's stripped-down beats. The…

braggadocio hip-hop lineage and authenticity self-naming/identity

Break You Off

The Roots

A slow-burning seduction track built around a repeated come-on hook, in which the narrator positions himself as a superior…

seduction and desire infidelity masculine competition

Shake Your Pom Pom

Missy Elliott

A dance-floor instruction manual dressed up as a soundtrack single, this track turns a dance move into a call-and-response…

bodily confidence performance and spectacle female authority over desire

Smooth Operator

Big Daddy Kane

A pure showcase of technical bravado from peak-era Big Daddy Kane, alternating between boasting about his lyrical dominance over…

braggadocio lyrical mastery competitive dominance

You Know My Steez

Gang Starr

This is a straight-up hip-hop statement of purpose: Guru surveys a rap landscape he considers watered down and reasserts Gang…

artistic integrity authenticity vs. commercialism spiritual/moral authority

Call Me Up

Gang of Four

A clipped, funk-inflected critique of consumer leisure culture, where a narrator recites the empty slogans of 'having fun' while…

consumerism alienation competition as ideology

Keep Their Heads Ringin'

Dr. Dre

A party-rap flex from the Friday soundtrack in which Dr. Dre spends three verses establishing his sonic and physical dominance…

braggadocio sonic dominance party/hangout culture

Mighty Wings

Cheap Trick

A pulsing arena-rock anthem built for a movie about jet pilots, this song trades Cheap Trick's usual wit and irony for…

risk and ambition transcendence through flight smallness of earthly life

Ain't No Half-Steppin'

Big Daddy Kane

A pure battle-rap showcase from 1988, this track is Big Daddy Kane doing exactly what its title threatens: establishing…

braggadocio competition/battle rap originality vs imitation

Set It Off

Main Source

A posse cut built entirely on escalation, where five MCs trade increasingly violent boasts over a repeated command to 'set it…

street violence as performance masculine one-upmanship criminal bravado

Norf Norf

Vince Staples

A deceptively bouncy, almost breezy track that lays out daily life inside Long Beach's Norfside gang culture with flat,…

gang loyalty and territory normalization of violence poverty and hustling

I'm That Type of N***a

The Pharcyde

A posse-cut style boast track from The Pharcyde's early catalog, built around a call-and-response taunt asking who's in charge,…

braggadocio masculine posturing hip-hop lineage and skill claims

Quality Control

Jurassic 5

A posse cut in which six MCs take turns asserting their technical superiority over the microphone, with no narrative beyond the…

lyrical dexterity old-school authenticity vs. commercialism group unity and crew pride

The Becoming

Little Brother

This is Phonte's origin-story boast track, tracing Little Brother's formation from college battle-rapping to underground…

hip-hop origin myth competitive rap battling underdog vindication

Lyrics to Go

A Tribe Called Quest

A pure showcase track in which Q-Tip and Phife Dawg trade verses of boastful wordplay, with the title hook functioning less as a…

braggadocio craft and mastery of rhyme group identity and loyalty

Musical Massacre

Eric B.

A boastful battle-rap track built around fire and combustion imagery, where the MC positions himself as an unstoppable force who…

braggadocio competition/battle rap destruction as metaphor for skill

You're a Customer

EPMD

This is a boast track built almost entirely on the battle-rap tradition: Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith trade verses…

braggadocio authenticity vs imitation competitive rap tradition

Ching-A-Ling

Missy Elliott

A club-floor victory lap built almost entirely from boasts and hook repetition, this track is less about narrative than about…

braggadocio female sexual agency wealth and status

Friday

Ice Cube

This is Ice Cube's contribution to the 'Friday' soundtrack lineage, a loosely structured verse-by-verse tour of a South Central…

neighborhood pride and territoriality hedonism as escape normalized violence

Rosa Parks

OutKast

A brash, funk-driven boast track in which Outkast repurpose a civil-rights phrase as a battle-rap taunt, using the chorus as a…

competition and dominance in hip-hop staying artistically ahead Southern regional pride

m.A.A.d city

Kendrick Lamar

A two-part suite that reconstructs Kendrick Lamar's adolescence in Compton as a series of near-misses and moral compromises,…

gang violence and territorial identity childhood exposure to trauma survivor's guilt and moral compromise

Shook Ones, Pt. II

Mobb Deep

A menacing first-person address from a Queensbridge narrator to a rival or interloper, built almost entirely as a threat and a…

street violence and survival authenticity vs. posturing fatalism and mortality

Bring Da Ruckus

Wu‐Tang Clan

The opening track of Enter the Wu-Tang stages hip-hop as martial arts combat, with each MC treating the microphone like a weapon…

martial arts mythology as metaphor for lyrical combat collective identity vs individual bravado urban violence and street survival

Alphabet Aerobics (The Cut Chemist 2 1/2 Minute Workout)

Blackalicious

An abecedarian rap that turns the alphabet itself into a rhyme scheme, with Gift of Gab running from A to Z in a single unbroken…

verbal dexterity and craft competition and battle rap braggadocio language as raw material